William Plumer's memorandum of proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803-1807

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Preface

Wiuu1AM Puiumer of New Hampshire merits the recognition of historical students along with those other pioneer diarists of the United States Senate, William Maclay of Pennsylvania and John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, for Plumer’s Memorandum is an almost daily record of sessions in the Senate from October 17, 1803, when Congress convened in special session to consider the treaty and conventions with France respecting the purchase of Louisiana, until the close of his term in March, 1807.

William Plumer was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1759, but moved with his parents to Epping, New Hampshire, in 1768. After a liberal education he engaged in the practice of law, but soon entered politics and rose to the position of presiding officer of the New Hampshire house of representatives and later, of the senate. He was a member of the State constitutional convention in 1791-1792; served as United States senator from December 6, 1802 to March 3, 1807; and was governor of his State for the terms of 1812-1813 and 1816-1819. As presidential elector in 1820, Plumer cast the single vote against James Monroe, not, as has so often been stated, to protect Washington’s fame as the only President to receive the unanimous electoral vote, but to draw attention to his friend John Quincy Adams, for whom he voted, and as a protest against what he regarded as the wasteful extravagance of the Monroe Administration.

The later years of Plumer’s life, until his death in 1850, were devoted to literature. His election as first president of the New Hampshire Historical Society was a recognition of his labors in the historical field. For many years he harbored the ambi-

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Vill ; Preface tion of writing a history of the United States and employed every opportunity to collect materials toward that end. In his Memorandum, Plumer relates his conversations with Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and Albert Gallatin, to whom he unfolded his plan and whose advice he sought. He also tells with what painstaking care he tried to gather a complete set of early government documents. A small fragment in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress attests to the fact that Plumer at least started to write his history but he was forced to give it up. He then devoted himself to biographical sketches of distinguished Americans and left a mass of materials on the subject.

The Memorandum is but a small part of Plumer’s collection, yet it forms a distinct unit and is therefore published with but little reference to his other records. Only a few extracts from the Memorandum were printed by William Plumer Junior in his Life of William Plumer. The younger Plumer remarks that Senator Plumer’s reports and discussions of the secret debates in the Senate “ belong to the history of the country, rather than of the individual, and are therefore not quoted here.” Senator Plumer’s account of the debate on the Breckinridge Bill for the government of Louisiana (1804) — failure to report which was deplored by Henry Adams as a serious gap in the parliamentary history of the Union — was printed in the American Historical Review in January, 1917 (Vol. XXII, 340-364). This portion of the Memorandum formed the basis of Chapter VII in my Constitutional History of the Louisiana Purchase.

The journal here reproduced is in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The editor first used it in the summer of 1916. At that time the second part of the manuscript, covering the period from November 5, 1804 to March 3, 1805, was missing. It was located in the State Library in Concord, New Hampshire, and has since been transferred to the Library of Congress. The New Hampshire State Library contains a large

Preface ix amount of valuable Plumer material, especially letters. There is also a smaller quantity in the library of the New Hampshire Historical Society at Concord.

Various references are made by Plumer to his method of taking notes. In most cases he took abbreviated notes during the debates and then wrote them out at length at night. Occasionally the diary went untouched for several days and was brought up to date at a sitting. Although the style is fairly uniform, it is possible to detect parts of the Memorandum which were more hurriedly written than others, or which were not revised. Plumer himself calls attention to this fact.

In editing the Memorandum the form of the original text has been followed as closely as possible, even as to spelling and punctuation. A few entries have been omitted, as also the appendices. The latter contained copies of documents and letters now easily available in print. The division of the manuscript into three volumes is here preserved as Parts I, II and III.

Lack of complete detailed official records of the debates in the Senate during the period covered by Plumer, and a careful comparison of his journal with the Memoirs of John Quincy Adams and the Annals of Congress, force one to the conclusion that Plumer’s Memorandum is an invaluable source for early American history. On the personal side, his descriptions df Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, John Marshall, Aaron Burr, George Clinton, Henry Clay, James Wilkinson, John Randolph of Roanoke, and a host of lesser lights, retouch our dim portraits of early political leaders who are, in Plumer’s own words, “ rapidly hasting to oblivion.”

EVERETT SOMERVILLE BRowN

Ann Arspor, MIcHIGAN May, 1922.

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MEMORANDUM: PROCEEDINGS OF CONGRESS, 1803-1804